Harmonia

A Forum for and the Background of the Mediation of Dialogue in Ancient and Modern Academies

Sunday 10 August 2008

Plato in Tübingen. "Tübinger Platon-Tage 2008: Über das Göttliche"

Tübingen has become popular since H.-J. Krämer's ground-breaking publication "Arete bei Platon und Aristoteles" (1959) and Gaiser's following "Ungeschriebene Lehre Platons" (1962 and 1968). We do not have to agree with G. Reale's exaggerated declaration that the Tübingen School (Hans Joachim Krämer, Konrad Gaiser and Thomas Alexander Szlezák among others) introduced "a new paradigm" into Plato interpretation because the debate between a systematic and a non-systematic Plato was alive at least ever since Hegel's time. The Tübinger School became known in the Anglo-Saxon world because of the hot debate between Vlastos and Krämer in the early sixties, starting with Vlastos' review of Krämer's dissertation that caused latter's reaction and subsequent chain reactions that included others as well (Th. Szlezák).
Admittedly this is far from being the first Plato Conference that takes place in Tübingen. What is Tübingen aiming at now, 2008, with this first conference labeled "Tübinger Platon-Tage"? Dietmar Koch, Prof. Dr. Männlein-Robert and Niels Weindtmann, who organize the Conference that will take place every two years in Tübingen, intend to revive the Tübingen Plato-tradition in Germany and abroad, and to turn Tübingen into a forum for dialogue on Plato again.
At this conference, I will discuss an extremely debated passage in Nomoi, which gradually became very famous, if not infamous, the passage on the "bad soul". But first, there are some steps to be fulfilled in my attempt to free the receptacle in the Timaeus from the charge of being bad: a topic for another occasion.
General information (in German) and the subjects of the following conferences on Plato (2010 and 2012) can be found in the link:
http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/philosophie/platontage/index.htm
The program and timetable of the conference in which I will learn a lot from all these profound and experienced Professors can be downloaded:
http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/philosophie/platontage/programm.pdf

PS: Wolfgang Rainer-Mann wrote an article entitled "Plato in Tübingen" (OSAP 2006). He started to write a review of Gaiser's "Gesammelte Schriften" (ed. by Th. Szlezák, Academia Verlag 2004) but ended composing a forty-pages general critique against Tübingen Plato interpretation. We should take his rather superficial critique of the so-called Tübinger School with a grain of salt. I expected something philosophically more interesting and objective by such a sagacious philosopher who composed a very challenging book on the Aristotelian Categories (The Discovery of Things).

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